


Blow Down These Walls, O Western Wind

by theherocomplex



Series: Distant Shores and Voices [5]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Reconciliation, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/pseuds/theherocomplex
Summary: If only she could simply set this love aside like a worn-out pair of boots; if only she could let apathy swallow hope, and then move on, lighter and quieter.Alas: in love she is, and in love she will apparently stay, until the Gallows itself is nothing but broken rocks tumbling into the sea.Or: the road back home.





	Blow Down These Walls, O Western Wind

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [aban_asaara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara) and [snuffes](http://snuffes.tumblr.com) for their help with this fic. <3 
> 
> [Recommended](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYhbC0MXlY) [listening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXttp8_xSHQ).

The house is hardly visible from the path, though Hawke only went far enough to cast her magelight toward the causeway. Rain and a ferocious late-spring wind from the west nearly drowned her light before it left her hand, and she beats a hasty retreat to her alleged shelter as soon as she glimpses the floodwaters surging between her and the road home.

When she creeps back inside, she's almost too preoccupied with untangling her hair from her staff to notice Fenris barely acknowledged her return. She swears over her chilled fingers, blinks the rest of the rain from her eyes, and then drags the door shut, too tired to care about the wind slipping through the crooked frame.

"The causeway's still flooded." Hawke rubs her cheeks. "Up to our elbows, at least. Well, your elbows. Shoulders for me. I'm open to suggestions, but I'd say our best bet is to wait it out here." She tosses the brightest smile she can manage in Fenris' direction, but he doesn't even jerk his shaggy head up to look her way. She's become quite familiar with the top of his head, along with the curve of his jaw as he turns from her and walks away. This is the first time in _ages_ they've been in the same room longer than it takes for her to walk in and him to depart. If circumstances weren't so bloody miserable, she'd be jumping for joy.

"Fenris," she says, after the wind gets bored battering at the door and slides off to torture some other place, "how's the leg?"

"Fine," he replies. More of a grunt than a word, really. He shakes water from his hair and Hawke's heart clenches — he might _look_ at her, just for a moment, and she'll be able to see if he's lying — but his eyes slide away from hers, to the dark, rubble-strewn floor, and he returns to fussing with a bandage.

It's just wishful thinking to hope she'll get an actual conversation out of him, for once, but no one could ever say she doesn't cling to her lost causes. She inches toward him, conjuring a whisper of magelight in her palm as she goes. Fenris looks up, but it's just reflex; Hawke sees the wary flash of his eyes, and how quickly he tamps it down to indifference. She can't read a damn thing in his face, and she tries, she _tries_ , to ignore how hollow the world seems when he looks at her as if he's never known her at all. As if he's trying to forget, and succeeding.

"Just want to make sure you're not secretly bleeding to death." She sits down beside him, careful to keep enough space between them — and when did she learn what amount of space was _enough_? — and holds out her light. "It was a nasty hit, and the arrows they used could —"

Fenris turns his head away, though he doesn't protest when she pulls back the bandage and peers at the wound gouged up his thigh. For most of its length, the damage is skin-deep, and the bleeding's stopped; up toward the curve of his hip, there's a deeper puncture where the arrowhead finally came to rest. Hawke still isn't sure how the bandit managed the hit, but seeing it, dark and sore, staring back at her like an accusing eye, she wishes she could kill them all over again.

 _Now, now_ , chides a low, knowing voice — it sounds very much like her mother's, and gooseflesh prickles over Hawke's arms — _you're not allowed to be protective of him anymore. You weren't to begin with, not really, but he humored you for a little while._

She exhales harder than she wants to and shakes out the magelight. "It seems you live to fight another day," she says. He nods once, and she keeps going, knowing how pathetic she is for being encouraged by even that little. "So long as we survive this storm, that is, but we won't lack for warmth. I'll get a fire started — anyone who's out in this won't be able to see the smoke, so."

Before she can sound any more ridiculous, she heads for a promising pile of broken furniture. The wood is damp, but a cantrip takes care of that quickly enough, and she loses herself for a few moments in the task of building a fire that won't burn down the house, and them with it. Always nice to get some practice with flint and tinder, too, even if she has mana to spare.

Fenris is silent all through her work. Not that she expects him to help, or wants him to; that leg wound may not be the death-blow it could have been, but it's nasty enough to keep him on bedroll-rest for the night. Or till the causeway goes down enough for them to make the trudge back to Kirkwall. On her own, she could freeze the water solid and trip merrily and perhaps literally home, but the journey would be agonizing for Fenris. Better to wait out the storm, and reassess in the morning.

They haven't been alone together in years. Why now? Why, of all the shitty jobs she takes because she has no idea what else to do with her time, did he insist on coming along for this one? The bandits — aside from the lucky shot, whose luck ended when she froze his lungs — were half-starved, fueled only by a long winter's desperation. She could have handled them alone.

 _Why_? Hawke wants to scream, until the wind itself goes quiet. _Why are you still here? You haven't had so much as a smile for me since I got off the boat from Jader, much less a friendly word. What do you_ want _, Fenris?_

She shouldn't have thought of the smile. They'd all been waiting for her on the docks, with lemon sugars and back-slapping hugs, and there, between Aveline and Isabela, was Fenris, smiling — but he'd been absent from Wicked Grace the next night, and the next.

Since then, nothing. If ever there had been warmth between them — well. She shouldn't think of that, either. But was it too much to hope they would have found a way to be friends once more?

 _If I want something, it can be taken away._ Her throat hurts. _More to the point, it'll be ruined as soon as I reach for it, and I should have learned this lesson a long time ago._

"Are you warm enough?" she asks, by her reckoning an hour after starting the fire. Fenris has stopped fussing with his bandages and is slowly sharpening his dagger. On a whetstone, Hawke realizes, she gave him.

It's like falling down a flight of stairs, over and over.

"I am," he tells her, still without looking up. "Thank you."

How is it, she wonders, that two years ago she would have happily handed over her soul to be alone with Fenris for five minutes, and now she can only wish there was still an entire sea between them?

Across the room, Fenris sets the whetstone and dagger aside, and leans his head against the wall, eyes shut.

***

Hawke rustles in her bedroll for some time, long enough for Fenris' shoulder, which rests against a hole in the wall, to go completely numb. Still, he does not move till her breathing comes smooth and shallow, and she is nothing more than a dark heap of blankets on the other side of a dying fire.

Shifting strains the bandages and the fresh-scabbed wound beneath them, but the pain keeps him alert, ears turned toward the silent night beyond their decrepit shelter. How Hawke managed to find this ruin is a mystery, though he supposes he should be grateful for this half-roof, these mostly-solid walls. They could be trying to shelter in one of the innumerable caves that dot the Wounded Coast — competing with spiders and Tal-Vashoth for scraps of warmth and safety, no doubt — or slogging their way back to Kirkwall.

This is, he tells himself, the best he could hope for.

Hawke sighs. A forlorn sound, and weary; how easily he can imagine her frowning faintly as she sleeps, a line drawn between her brows, her mouth in a low curve.

Long years of practice have made it no easier to shove the image away. Hawke remains, as ever, within him, and he cannot get her out.

_Tell the truth. You have not tried._

Not with any real effort. If he wished, he could have mastered the trick of forgetting her years ago — and then what?

Then he would not be lying in a dank corpse of a house, breathing in rotted wood and wet leaves, with a fresh scar carved around his hip. Then he would be leagues away from Kirkwall, somewhere warm that sees the sun more than five times a spring, where he cannot smell the docks or hear the harbor chains creak in a strong wind.

Then he might find _peace_ , and never again yearn for —

A crack sounds from just beyond the door. He starts upright a half-second before Hawke does, already reaching for his sword when a red spike of pain arcs through his left side. With a muffled groan, he sinks back to his bedroll, hand tight around the hilt.

"Wait," Fenris pants, as the pain passes, but Hawke is already out the door, staff at the ready. The last dying embers shed thin light along the folds of her cloak and the waves of her hair, and then she vanishes, lightfooting into the starless night.

Swearing to himself, he pushes to his feet and limps forward, his sword a makeshift crutch. He trips over a piece of the roof and barely catches himself before he falls. The effort of staying upright sends another hot bolt of agony through him, followed by a surge of pure anger. Of _course_ she would run off into the dark without a thought or a word, bent on doing all herself.

Anger fades all too quickly; she took her staff with her, and wore her cloak. People disappear into the world with far less all the time. He traveled for years with little more than a sword and desperation speeding his steps. And Hawke — he knows how quietly she can disappear, when she wishes. How easily. If she has done so now —

The breath sours in his lungs. "Hawke?" he calls, into the night, though he should know better. "Hawke!"

 _Don't leave._ He leans on his sword and peers into the rain. Once more, spring has refused to give way to summer, and all is cold and sodden. _Not again_.

Twigs snap just out of sight, accompanied by a dim rustling that may only be an animal slinking through the undergrowth, or a stealthy approach. And Hawke, in her dark cloak, is nowhere to be seen, or heard, though he strains his eyes to make out her form.

Fenris hobbles down one slick step, then another. The ground sucks at his bare feet — he will be digging mud from his toes for days — but he creeps down the path, listening, searching the darkness for any sign of her presence.

A fair summary of his years in Kirkwall, he thinks. When has he _not_ been looking for Hawke?

Before his thoughts go too far down that road, light blossoms at the end of the path. He recognizes Hawke's blue-white flames and lets out a breath, relief tempering his worry. She holds the flame close to her chest, where it can be easily dowsed, eyes fixed upon the path. So intent is she on her progress she stops barely three feet away, mouth opening in surprise when she sees him standing before her.

"Maker, your eyes —" She makes a hard noise in the back of her throat. "You should be inside, Fenris. Your wound won't —"

"I am well enough," he snaps, though the warm trickle of blood on his thigh pushes him right to the edge of the lie. "Where did you go?"

Hawke's eyebrows rise, and her mouth thins. Wordlessly, she holds up two limp, dark shapes, which quickly resolve into a pair of dead rabbits. "Just to the snares," she says, already walking past him. "I figured, why wait to check them in the morning, when I was awake to begin with?"

"You set snares."

She doesn't dignify that with a response. Instead, she holds out her free hand to help him up the stairs, but a fresh burst of what he knows is unreasonable anger — can he truly expect any explanation from her, after such silence on his part? — makes him turn away, and climb the stairs alone.

He drops back onto his bedroll with a groan, and takes a furtive look at his bandages while she busies herself with the rabbits. Blood soaks the linen, but the fresh bandages are in Hawke's pack, and though his temper only harms himself, he cannot make himself ask for them.

***

She could skin a rabbit in the dark, thanks to those months wandering about Ferelden, but she signs a quick cantrip over the low fire before her hands get bloody. No need to risk cutting up her fingers along with their breakfast.

The rabbits are plump little things; Hawke's stomach rumbles at the thought of folding fresh-roasted meat into a few slices of the waybread in her pack.

_If only Hightown could see me now, blood to the wrists, cracking bones with my fingers. My greatest scandal of all._

Fenris prods at his thigh when he thinks she isn't paying attention, then lets his head fall back against the wall. The only sounds are the wet noises her knife makes as she skins and dresses the rabbits, and the faint sound of fresh rain hitting the roof. It'd be almost peaceful, if she didn't feel the anger rolling off Fenris in thick, sour waves. Maker help her, she can almost _smell_ how angry he is.

"I hope you like it well-done," she says, because her mouth _will_ take every opportunity it can to make her life worse. "It's the only way I know how to cook rabbit."

"I am unsurprised," Fenris replies. Before she can get over the shock of him entering an actual conversation with her, he falls silent once more. A thin line of firefly green gleams in the dark, then vanishes as he closes his eyes.

Hawke catches herself just before she buries her head in her bloody palms. A neat pile of bones and viscera sits beside an even neater pile of meat, ready for burying and for roasting. Her stomach rumbles plaintively again as she sets the meat under a few embers, but her appetite is gone. Father always said never to break bread with someone you didn't trust, but what about someone you weren't sure you _liked_ any longer?

"I'll be back in a moment," she says, without expecting a response. Still, she takes her time gathering up the bones and wrapping them in the discarded skins — while she _can_ dress her meat, she's never not made a mess of it — just in case Fenris decides he wants to acknowledge her.

He doesn't. So she stands up, joints aching in the cold, and slips outside.

It occurs to her, for one brutal, shameful moment while she scrubs her hands in a freezing stream, she could simply leave him here. Go back to Kirkwall, fetch help — better yet, send help _back_ and avoid dealing with Fenris' years-long sulk any longer, and just be _done_.

She could just leave. She tried, but that blasted hope _something_ could be salvaged from this shithole of a city, even if it was just one friendship, called her back. And he had smiled at her on the docks, just once, before he walked away — but long enough for her to think she had done the right thing.

More fool her. She should have carved out this longing years ago, back when she heard him laughing behind the closed door of Isabela's room. Maker help her, she should have stayed in Ferelden, hunting darkspawn and eating half-burned rabbits till the end of her days. Kirkwall, and everyone in it, would have been just fine without her. Especially the elf sitting in the abandoned house behind her.

"Now that sounds like a great deal like self-pity," she says to the water. Stray rills of light, blue and green and white, dance about her fingers. When they touch her skin, they flare once, and die. She watches them long enough to go numb to the wrists, then stands and makes her slow way back to the house.

If only she could simply set this love aside like a worn-out pair of boots; if only she could let apathy swallow hope, and then move on, lighter and quieter.

Alas: in love she is, and in love she will apparently stay, until the Gallows itself is nothing but broken rocks tumbling into the sea.

Mud squelches against her boots. She pauses at the stairs long enough to kick the worst clots free, but freezes when she hears a moan from inside the house.

All thoughts of leaving evaporate; Hawke rushes back inside to find Fenris hunched over himself, a hand braced at his hip. He lifts his head, eyes flashing as their gazes meet, and he begins to speak — but then hisses through his teeth, features contorted with pain.

She doesn't waste time on words. Maker knows he'll only snarl at her if he _does_ respond. He may well just snarl regardless, since being in the same room with her is clearly some new kind of _torture_ —

_Enough, enough, you idiot, just get the damn bandages._

In the middle of rooting through her pack, her numb fingers jam against a bit of curved glass. Hawke startles herself — and Fenris — with a wild burst of laughter as she fishes the bottle out, along with a fistful of bandages.

"You're in luck," she says, brandishing the bottle as she kneels beside him. "Look what I found."

He takes the bottle from her hand as soon as she's dealt with the cork, then downs half the contents in two swallows.

"That's a double dose, Fenris," she says, as she pulls back the waistband of his trousers. "Far be it from me to — oh, Maker, look at this."

Fresh blood meets her fingers as she traces the raw edge of the wound. _Anders would have had this closed up in five minutes,_ she thinks. _Me? I just gawk._

Hawke risks a look at his face; his features are still twisted in pain, but his breathing is easier, and a little color has come back to his cheeks. The markings glow, fitfully, in time with his pulse.

"I have to get you back to Kirkwall," she says. "To a healer. Just let me bandage you again, and we'll go. The causeway —"

"Will still be flooded. Don't be stupid."

The strain in his voice, the lines around his mouth and eyes — they mean it's the pain talking, not him. And he certainly _seems_ ashamed of himself, looking at her sidelong through heavy lashes. So, she can ignore the vicious undercurrent in his words, and focus on getting him cleaned up and into new bandages, and not feel a wasp burrowing under her ribs.

She _can_ , but she doesn't. All along, what has made this _utterly predictable_ heartbreak bearable is that he didn't regret her. She could go about her life, safe in the knowledge that at least to Fenris, she wasn't a fool — that he saw her, as she really was, and whatever else lay between them, that hadn't changed.

Her hand still rests on the warm, solid muscle of his side. It's the first time in years she's touched him, skin to skin — though Maker knows she's dreamed of it — and now she recoils like she's picked up a hot kettle by mistake.

Fenris doesn't move as she retreats. All the pain falls from his face, leaving some unreadable mix of emotions behind. All that watching him, Hawke muses bitterly, and she still can't even guess what he's thinking.

"All right, then," she says, when the worst of the sting has passed. "We'll stay. Let me get you cleaned up, and put a fresh bandage on that."

"I will take care of myself," he says, in a voice pressed flat. "Go to sleep, Hawke, or check the rest of your snares."

That's not pain making his voice tremble so; Fenris' anger is impossible to mistake. "Fine," she snaps back, the brittle veneer over her own anger crumbling to dust before she can rein it in. "I'm dismissed. Shout if you need me, preferably before you bleed out."

That earns her another complex look. He licks chapped lips and cuts his eyes down to the gauze wadded against his wound. "I don't —"

"Yes, Fenris, I know, you don't need me. Don't worry. You've been abundantly clear, and even I'm not _that_ stupid."

The chill air lets her words ring on and on, clear as crystal. Fenris freezes in the middle of blotting at his wound, and turns up his head to watch her with cold, bright eyes.

***

Fenris has dreaded this moment for years, but now he finds he is only weary, and heartsore, and full of twisted longing and regret.

She is still so beautiful, even shaking with the effort of mastering her anger. The fire is half-dead again, but enough light remains to gild her cheek, where he once was brave enough to rest his hand. Now her skin is smudged with dirt and ash, and a few flecks of dried blood dot her chin. Above it all, her eyes burn, cold as lyrium, and just as unforgiving.

Without another word she rises and walks back to her bedroll. Someone else would have pulled their shoulders straight and played at defiance, but Hawke, for all her vanities, has never cared for pride. She simply walks, defeated, and lies down on the heap of blankets.

The warmth of her hand lingers on his side.

"Hawke," he says, when he can once more trust his voice. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." There is new parchment less blank than her voice. "It's fine, Fenris."

The breath catches in his throat. That, he thinks, is the first lie she has ever told him.

"It is not —" He pushes himself up, still pressing the gauze to his wound, ignoring the fresh blood soaking the cloth. "— _fine_. I hurt you."

"Oh, Maker." A harsh, jeering laugh meets him halfway. Hawke rolls onto her back, her vicious smile almost hidden in her hair. "Don't give yourself that much credit. _Lots_ of people hurt me. It's really lost a lot of its sting."

The second lie. He sinks back to his bedroll, feeling her eyes upon him as he leans against the wall and stretches out his legs. "We both know that isn't true."

"What does it matter?" The rain almost obscures her voice. She turns her face up to the broken roof and shuts her eyes. "Or — it hasn't mattered for a while. So why now?"

_Because I cannot forget you. Because it has always mattered, even when I wished it hadn't._

"There is never any excuse for cruelty," he says instead.

Hawke barks another horrible laugh. "What city are you living in? There's always an excuse. And if there isn't one, people will make one up."

She draws a sharp breath, as if to go on. Fenris holds his breath; if there is no other help for him to give, he can try to bear some of her grief, for a time — but then she covers her eyes with the back of her hand, and her mouth constricts, just once.

His own eyes sting. There will never be a time when he does not wish to help her, in what ways he can -- but he can't reach her, not now, and perhaps not ever.

"Hawke…"

She lifts her hand and gazes at him across the fire. Her face is a smooth mask, revealing nothing, until she gives him a sad, tired smile and lets her hand fall back into place.

A moment later, she rolls on her side. "It _is_ fine, Fenris. You weren't trying to hurt me. That matters, more than you'd think."

No, he had never tried to hurt her, yet he kept stumbling into it, effortlessly, with every word and action since he left her staring at the fire, a blanket around her bare shoulders.

Why has so much else faded while that memory remains? Shame preserves, it seems, when even love cannot.

The silence endures long enough for him to think she has fallen asleep, and in fact he has begun to doze when Hawke next speaks. Fenris starts awake, leaning forward despite his wound to catch every word.

"I know it's a few years too late, but…" Hawke turns her head, almost meeting his eyes over her shoulder. "I never thanked you for coming to see me, after."

The sleepy haze falls from his mind. There is only one _after_ she could mean, and the house is small enough for the echoes of her grief to brush against him.

Here is another memory that refuses to fade: Hawke, hollow-eyed, tearless, alone in her vast parlor, picking at her fingers until they bled. Leaving her alone in the face of such loss was a betrayal too monstrous for him to bear. So he went, though she barely noticed him at all, and sat with her until Aveline and Merrill arrived to take her to bed.

"If I had known you would leave so soon…after," he begins, "I would have —"

There his voice leaves him entirely.

***

Every ounce of willpower Hawke possesses is bent on _not_ springing out of her bedroll, yelping _Yes? Yes? What would you have done_? All she can do is wait for him to finish his sentence, which seems less likely with each passing second. He's just a silent, dimly glowing blur at the end of her vision, and in time, she begins to wonder if he spoke at all.

"You left no word," he says, into the night, soft enough she could ignore the veiled accusation if she chooses. "None."

 _Oh, but I did_. She presses her face into her musty blankets. _Just not for you._

"I thought Aveline would share the note," she says, his gaze boring into her spine. "Shame on her for being greedy and keeping my goodbyes all to herself."

"That's not —" No mistaking _that_ noise; Fenris has such a unique way of expressing his annoyance. In spite of herself, Hawke smiles. "Was it not worth telling me you were leaving? That you had no fixed plans to return? That you — that you might _stay_ in Ferelden, for good?"

Well, there's her smile gone — possibly for good. It had been a cheat, slipping away like that, with only a note to Aveline and a few pages of instructions for her household that boiled down to _Don't let the templars in, give yourselves a raise or twenty, and the getaway money is in my workroom safe._ But if she hadn't cheated, and taken the dawn boat to Jader the very morning she decided to go, she would have stayed, wandering her dark house while all within her decayed. Saying goodbye had simply not been an option.

"It wasn't fair, I know that," she says — without turning around, because she was a coward then and nothing has changed. "And I'm sorry. But really, you'd already said the only goodbye I was likely to get, so what was the use of hoping for another?"

Hawke only realizes what she said when Fenris stops breathing, and the markings go dark.

"Shit." She squeezes her head in both hands. "That was — Fenris, I didn't mean —"

"On the contrary, I think that is the most honest thing you've said since the beginning of this misadventure."

Horror at what just came out of her mouth transforms, effortlessly, into anger. "A misadventure _you_ insisted on coming along on, for reasons I cannot _begin_ to comprehend. I was just getting used to your _walk out of every room Hawke enters_ act, too, so — why the hell _are_ you here? Unless you just woke up, and felt like running into an ambush today?"

Her heart beats so quickly it might tear free of her chest. Maker, it's been _ages_ since she was this angry at someone. She doesn't even think she's been this angry at _Carver_.

"Is it a joke?" she asks, when Fenris doesn't appear to be breaking his volcanic silence any time soon. "Or are you punishing me for leaving without telling you? Which, well, you weren't _speaking_ to me when I left. Trying to say goodbye seemed like a fool's errand, and I was already full up on those. So really, it wasn't personal, it was just…triage."

Hawke's heart has time to rabbit through a few heartbeats before Fenris snarls and throws the empty elfroot bottle at the far wall. At least Hawke _hopes_ it's empty, or he'll regret wasting it soon enough.

"All of this is personal," he says, absolutely seething. "Every last bit of it. You _left_ , without a damn word, after —"

"My mother was dead!" Hawke thrashes upright, lightning crackling along her spine. "And the next time I saw you after that was when you offered me up to the Arishok — thank you, for that, by the way. I always wanted to be filleted in front of half the city."

Running in mad circles for her life, freezing the bastard behind her long enough to swallow another vial, all while she felt the world skittering away on thousands of tiny legs. And that was _before_ he gutted her, and she used whatever shreds were left to burn him alive.

Maker, she was an idiot. For throwing herself between this fucking city and harm, over and over, and hoping something might change. Hoping something she fixed might _stay_ that way, for once.

"I didn't owe you _anything_ ," she spits. And then, because now she's cracked the shell over all her hurts, and she can't stop what pours out: "All that, and you never — you never even came to see how I was." _I thought we'd at least be friends, someday. Silly, stupid me._ "So forgive me for not hand-delivering a letter stating my intentions; I had _every_ reason to think it'd be unwanted. You know, like the rest of me."

She can't stand herself right now. There's anger, and then there's whatever _this_ is, poison jabs in the dark, one last attempt to score points in a contest neither of them will win.

_I loved you so much I had to cross a sea to get away from it. And now — now I know I should have stayed._

Fenris' chest heaves, and he twists a bandage between his fists till the linen frays and unspools around his fingers. His eyes are the brightest point in all the world.

Hawke is so bloody tired. There's no end to this, just more pain, more longing curdled into anger, and nothing she can do or say will change that. Some things are only ever lost. "This is pointless," she says. "I'm — I'm going to check the causeway."

"You were gone for two weeks before I knew," Fenris says, as she reaches the door. "I found out over Wicked Grace. Anders was the one to tell me."

Hawke smashes the heel of her hand into the doorframe. Rotted wood crumbles at the impact, and a few hungry splinters worry into her palm. Well, it _is_ his turn for a cheap shot or two, she supposes. "So. The absolute worst possible scenario."

That earns her a low, weary laugh. "Indeed. Though Merrill distracted him before he could gloat too much."

"Oh?"

"She yelled, _Oops, you spilled your drink_ , and when he looked down, she poured her ale in his lap."

A clumsy laugh bursts out of her before she can clap a hand over her mouth. "She _didn't_."

"She very much did." Fenris shifts, and lets out a long, exhausted sigh. "Hawke…"

"Well, the causeway awaits," she says, brightly, and has one foot out the door when he speaks again. And damn her, she can't help pausing to listen.

***

Fenris steels himself for Hawke's answer — which will inevitably be some attempt at evasion, judging by the way she tosses her hair back, and squares her shoulders — before he puts his question to her.

"Why did you return?"

She deflates in an instant, still and small, a dark huddle in a black doorway. "Would you believe me if I said Alistair and I had killed all the darkspawn, so there was nothing left for me to do?"

Not her worst attempt, but certainly in the top ten. But his mind latches onto _Alistair_ , and though he tries to ignore it, jealousy pools, cold and heavy, in his gut.

"I would not." He forces his voice to remain steady, though now his skin prickles hot in counterpoint to the cold yet spreading through him. "Are you going to answer?"

"There _is_ no answer, Fenris. I'd done what I went to Ferelden to do — and we really did put a dent in all the darkspawn running around — and so coming back seemed like the only thing left."

"Your Warden friend didn't try to recruit you?" The words are bitter enough to choke him, but he cannot keep himself from saying them. As soon as the Warden's name appeared in Hawke's letters to Aveline, he had feared losing Hawke again — knowing he had no right at all to do so — either to the Wardens, or to simply _that_ Warden.

Hawke is quiet for a long time. "If I didn't know better," she says, still facing the night, "I'd say that was jealousy talking, Fenris."

The last linen thread snaps. "It is."

Hawke takes a quick breath, then laughs without turning. "I'm sure the Wardens would be happy to recruit you, if that's what you —"

"Stop." He is almost begging, his head too heavy, his chest too full. "You were gone. I thought you wouldn't return."

At last she turns around. There is no help for it; her beauty moves him as nothing else ever has.

She pulls her cloak tight about her, and meets his eyes without flinching. In silence they watch each other, until the rain dies and even the fire goes out.

Hawke speaks first. "Why did you stay in Kirkwall?"

There are a dozen answers, but only one that matters. "In case you came back."

Hawke shudders. "Maker help me, but I can't believe that. Not when you didn't speak to me besides a hello until — until you insisted on coming along on this little jaunt —"

_How could I not come along? You said you were going alone. You might have vanished again, as quickly as the last time, and with as little word._

"— so, why?"

"Why didn't you stay in Ferelden?"

"We've been over this, it was time, and —" She gives him a stricken, helpless look, and drags her hands through her hair. "Maker's ass and _balls_. There wasn't anything _there_ for me. Lothering was wiped away, like it had never been there. The fields were all dead, and when I tried to find the farm, it was…it was just ash. Nothing grows there now. It won't, for years." A single tear makes its way down her cheek and she angrily, viciously brushes it away. "A lovely metaphor for my whole life. Broken glass and burned earth. Oh, _shit_."

"Yet you stayed for _six months_ ," he presses, unable to stop himself. So long as he keeps talking, he can resist the voice telling him to rise, to go to her and try to hold her once more. "Surely there was something…"

He cringes as Hawke gapes at him, another tear rolling toward her chin, forgotten.

"You — you really are _jealous_?" She shakes her head, laughing to herself. "Of _what_? Of _Alistair_? No, wait, please don't answer that. Let me set you straight — there was never _anything_ between us, because we were frankly too miserable to even _try_ — and — and — even if there _was,_ you weren't my lover, you weren't even my friend. Any right you had to say a damn thing was gone the moment you stopped talking to me. Which, as I recall, was right around the time I walked in on you and Isabela — so take your jealousy and shove it up your ass."

"I know!" he shouts, unable to tell if he is more angry at his own weakness, or at her. Shame gnaws at him — the stunned look on Hawke's face when she came around the corner, the glittering smile she hauled into place a moment later. "You think I wanted to be jealous? When you could have left, _again_ , with no word? I couldn't bear it. It was simply easier to avoid you. Just triage," he adds, ashamed of his own spite, helpless to stop it.

Hawke stares, lips curled back from her teeth, but she has never had much capacity for anger — unlike Fenris, who thinks he will never run out. A few moments, a breath or two, and her shoulders fall.

"That was the worst part, you know," she says.

***

Fenris snorts. He won't look at her, no matter how hard Hawke tries to catch his eye. "It seems you weren't immune to jealousy either," he says, with a fair attempt at snideness. It falls flat when she sees how his mouth trembles.

"Of course I wasn't. I was in love with you." His head jerks up, eyes startled wide and bright. Hawke spreads her hands, helpless, and smiles. "But — we weren't tied to each other. Even then, I understood. I didn't _like_ it, Maker, I hated it, but…in the end, wanting you to be happy won out."

"So what was the problem?"

"Because I could have handled you with someone else — I'd have been a horrible weepy mess about it, and I certainly _was_ , but…Fenris, you wouldn't talk to me after that. All that time, and we weren't even friends."

Maker, she's back to sounding like a child. The wind picks at her hair and tries to tangle it in the splintered wood of the doorframe, but she yanks it free and braids it into a loose plait over one shoulder. Fenris watches her hands, his face almost lost to shadow.

"Don't listen to me," she says. "You didn't owe me anything. Still don't. All I meant to say is…I missed you."

He nods. Hawke watches him gather up all the frayed linen and set it aside, then begin to wind a fresh bandage around his hands. "I missed you, Hawke."

The look he gives her is so shy, so unlike the Fenris she's seen all this time. She can't help smiling at him. He smiles back, still sad, still weary, long enough for her heart to skip, before he turns his eyes back to his hands.

"Isabela and I, we…" Fenris picks at a loose thread in the bandage. "It was…"

Hawke waits while he struggles, trying not to pay attention to the headache blooming in her temples. "You don't have to explain," she offers, in the end. "As much as I just tried to make it, it's not my business. You're free to…whatever, with whoever."

Fenris chuckles, a light sound to match the smile still lingering at the corners of his mouth. "Elegantly put, as always."

"Oh, please, I can't always astound you with my wit. Everyone has off days." She shivers in a fresh gust of wind and draws her cloak tight to her chin. "How's the hip?"

"Sore. Scabbed over. A misery, but not a fatal one." Fenris stretches out his leg, grimacing all the while. "I'm going to regret throwing that bottle."

Hawke laughs. "You're not already? Serves you right. Though it was very impressive — make sure you tell Varric all about it, he'll absolutely love it. A perfect bit of garnish for the latest atrocity."

"I will do no such thing," Fenris says, clearly mortally offended. "He needs no help with…whatever he does."

"Truer words." She sits down on the threshold, then tucks her hands under her thighs to warm them. "The rabbits're probably done by now, if you're hungry."

"Perhaps later."

The silence filling the air between them is almost friendly. At the very least, it's peaceful, and somewhere in the quiet she finds a near-starved thread of hope. Barely enough to cling to, but —

"I did come to see you, while you…recovered."

Hawke pauses in the middle of gathering up her hair out of her face. Her hands ache, deep within the bone, and she thinks of the lights in the stream, brushing against her and then dying. Better to have no hope at all, than to hope and want and watch it all come to nothing. _Again_. "Oh?"

Foolish, stupid heart; why does it beat so fast? When will it _learn?_

"You were —" Fenris holds up his clenched fists, then spreads his fingers. Exhaustion draws at his features, makes him twice as old. "You were drugged," he says, one corner of his mouth twitching when Hawke lets out a snort. "Which was, under the circumstances, quite understandable. Necessary, even. But I came. I was there."

So nearly ferocious, those last three words, daring her to deny him. "I stand corrected, then." She tucks her hair behind her ears, feeling quite small and petty indeed — and _annoyed_ , with a certain blond healer. "Anders never said a word. What a snide a—"

"I asked him not to."

Thank goodness for honest shock; it's a delightful cover for the sudden lightness in her belly, and the mental litany of _He came! He was there! He cared! For a little while!_ "And he _agreed_? Maker, of course I'd be drugged one of the three times in all history you two have gotten along."

There's that twitch again, pulling at the lovely curve of his lips. "He didn't want to admit me to begin with, if that's any consolation."

Hawke manages a weak laugh. "At least the world is still turning, I suppose." She chews the inside of her cheek. Fenris' attention has returned to the pile of bandages, but he looks up the moment she draws breath to speak. "Thank you, Fenris. For coming. To see me."

_Oh, that's not stilted or awkward, well done._

No twitch this time; just a frown, brows drawn low and eyes dimmed as he looks away. "I was not sure I would be welcome, seeing how I was responsible for your condition."

"Mm, I think we can actually shove most of that off on dear Isabela. But only most," she says, unable to help rubbing her belly. The scar's ridge can be felt even through two layers of wool and one of thin leather.

Fenris still won't look at her. The markings still glow, but only enough to make clear the tragic lines of his face. "It was a mistake. A wrong judgment. And you paid the price. Hawke, I apologize."

With anyone else, Hawke would have teased them for days. Weeks, even; she'd made Isabela sit through two salons at the De Launcets with her as punishment. But for too long, Fenris' pride was the most valuable coin he possessed. Possibly the only one. What worked with Isabela cannot work with him. 

"It was…horrible," she says, but pushes on before he can flinch too deeply. "But you made a decision when almost everyone else was still screaming and cowering against the walls. I can't blame you for trying to help."

"You paid the price," he repeats, stubbornly. "If anyone, it should have been me fighting."

"Well, I promise you: the next qunari invasion? The Arishok is all yours. And I'll come visit you while you're too drugged to remember. Then we'll be even, yes?"

He's about to argue, but Hawke keeps talking. Just one thing left to say, and then even this well-festered wound can begin to heal.

"As it turns out, it went even more poorly for him than for me. I lived. Don't — don't hate yourself, Fenris, please." She kneads her hands, chasing a warmth she knows will elude her. "I don't."

A jerky nod, and the markings' fitful shimmer steadies. For years, Hawke's wondered if they respond not just to pain or urgency, but to his emotions. Not that she's ever asked; there are bruises even she knows not to press.

Still; he owes her one answer yet.

"Why are you here?" A flash of green as his eyes meet hers, then flee. His lap is a mound of loose threads. "It's not for the coin, or a sense of righteousness. So…why?"

Now his gaze returns to hers, and lingers. Hawke grits her teeth to keep them from chattering, though the wind worries through all her layers. She'll wait till this house finishes its long decay and even the foundation stones have turned to dust, just so long as he _answers_ her.

He begins with a sigh, a low, hurt sound that makes her heart strain at her ribs. If only she could touch him — but she can't. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. So she waits, and listens, and the rain has time to fall again and then move away before he speaks.

"You said you would go alone. Bandits, out on the coast. And I worried for you, though — though I know how _capable_ you are —" Hawke stifles a laugh, and he flashes her a quick smile, sly and clearly pleased with himself. "— but I came because I worried you might leave again, and this…" He spreads his hands wide, taking in the house, the Wounded Coast, the long tale of hurt and longing between them. "This would be unsaid. The thought of you gone —" His hands slowly ball into fists. "Not again."

"I wasn't going to leave without saying goodbye," she protests, but the rest of her sentence hangs shimmering in the air: _this time._

"No," he agrees, with a nod. "But I could not risk it. Call me a fool if you wish; I'd deserve it. After all this time, it must have seemed strange…"

_More like a miracle._

"Well," she says. He begins to pick apart the plied threads, fingers working nimbly at the linen. "I'm glad you're here. Not for the wound, or for spending this whole night arguing with you, but…thank you, Fenris."

He gives her another nod, and in it echoes the delicate, courtly grace of his first bow, that night in the Alienage. A dozen broken bodies at their feet, both of them blood-spattered and weary, and yet there they stood, smiling like fools at each other while Carver rolled his eyes. No wonder Varric has to make up half of what he writes about them; no one would believe the truth.

"Thank _you_ , Hawke," he replies, with another tired smile. His voice rises as he keeps speaking, edged with reproach undimmed by the long, dry passage of years."I should have been clearer. I should have said something, before it came to this, and I —"

"I'm sorry," she blurts out, driven by wordless impulse. Let all the wounds be made clean; let no poison be left in their veins. Even if they don't walk out of here as friends, the old hurts will not weigh them down any longer. She's too bloody tired to be angry, and too damn old. "For —" _Everything._ "— for leaving, and for not saying a word about it. I just…it seemed like the only thing left to do."

Maker, the way he looks at her. No one else has ever just _watched_ before, as if they would never tire of it.

"The only thing," he says — not a question, but an invitation. A hand, reaching out across a chasm with no end, and no light within. No one watches her as Fenris does, and no one listens as he does, either.

Hawke nods. "It was all broken. Mother was — she was gone, and Carver, too, and everyone kept calling me _Champion, Champion_ , like it was supposed to make up for everything, and I just…" Her throat closes up, but she forces the words out. "I killed the Arishok, and that was the end of it, until it wasn't, and Kirkwall just went right back to being Kirkwall. Only now people expected me to do something about it, and it was like being at the bottom of a hole with a hundred people throwing dirt on my head."

She takes a ragged breath, fighting to get air into her lungs as her ears begin to ring. Never, not once, has she told this to anyone. Not even Alistair, who might have understood, if only secondhand.

"I started dreaming the same thing every night. I'd be walking through Kirkwall late at night, when it's quiet and almost lovely, except I'd realize it was only quiet because it was empty — there were no people, no birds, not even the gulls, and all the buildings were falling apart inside. And I'd try to get to the Hanged Man, or the estate, but I'd keep walking in circles, and whenever I'd try to talk I'd just hear a voice behind me, laughing and saying it didn't matter, and never would."

Hawke presses the heels of her hands against her eyes until stars burst behind her lids and the urge to cry recedes into the distance. "It probably sounds stupid. It _does_ sound stupid. Just a stupid, spoiled fool, who can't be grateful for what she has."

She thinks Fenris might be shaking his head, or speaking, but her voice rolls on, cracked and weak, without stopping.

"Nothing was any better with me here. No one was — it all just kept _breaking_. So I ran away." She stares down at her hands, her wretched, callused hands that aren't even good for healing; of course she had to be the kind of mage that can't fix a fucking thing. "At least in Ferelden I was useful. The world could always use a few less darkspawn."

" _Hawke_." She finally shuts her mouth, and looks up to find Fenris working at the buckles of his vambrace. "You matter. You have _always_ mattered." The metal falls away as he brandishes his wrist at her, a terrible hope written on his face.

The red silk blooms, even without light.

***

Hawke stares so long she might have turned to stone. But slowly, slowly, a tear forms, and falls, and a second soon follows. Fenris keeps his arm held high — he has come this far, and will not retreat — until her mouth quirks, and forms a small, unbearably sweet smile. She tries to hide it by pressing a fist to her lips, but one of his favorite things about Hawke — one of the many — is how her joy can never be long concealed.

Soon enough, she bursts out laughing, and wipes the tears away.

"If you tell me you just put that on this morning, I'm walking back to Kirkwall right now and you can fend for yourself," she says, between gasps for air.

"How lucky I haven't taken it off, then." His heart can't find its rhythm. How had he gone a single day without her smiling so?

"You —" Her face shifts between several expressions before settling on the same fragile smile. "This is too far away. Can I —?"

He gives his reply by way of shifting his sword and pack to make room for her. Hawke rises, clumsy, and snatches up her blanket before joining him, their sides barely touching.

That will not do, at all. Even that is too great a distance, after all this time. He settles his arm around her shoulders, and feels her hesitate for an instant before she melts into him, and wraps her arm around his chest.

"If I wake up right now, and we're still not speaking, I'm going to be devastated," she says into his shoulder. "So don't pinch me, or move, or —"

"You aren't dreaming." His voice nearly breaks. She is just as warm as he remembers. He has never forgotten. "Neither of us are. We are — I'm sorry, Hawke. For all of it."

"Me too. Oh, Maker, Fenris, I'm —" A bitten-off sob steals the rest of her sentence, and she hides beneath the blanket, her breath warm even through his armor.

Fenris strokes her hair. It would be enough, he thinks, to stay like this forever. Ignore the dawn, ignore the wind, and simply remain here until the rest of the house falls down and takes them with it. But there is more that must be said, before the night ends, and so he gathers himself enough to speak.

"You have always mattered to me," he tells her, bending his head so the words go no farther than their little circle of warmth. "Every day, even when — it never stopped. You changed everything. Do not doubt it. Without you —"

Hawke lifts her tear-stained face and gives him a knowing smile. "That's not fair to you, is it? When we met, you'd already done the hardest work yourself. That's _yours_ , all yours. But — I'm glad I helped." She turns her head and kisses the back of his hand.

Fenris shuts his eyes. Yes, it would be enough, if this moment never ended. The night seems to agree; hours have passed, and yet no sign of dawn touches the horizon. Hawke begins to doze, her head slipping from his shoulder — or so he thinks, until she speaks.

"What are we going to do, Fenris?"

A fair question. The echoes of their anger — some deserved, some not — still linger along the failing eaves. They could pick up the threads once more, and take the long way back to forgiveness.

Or — they could remember how he waited, and she returned. Life is short and often cruel, and he has learned, at last, when to let his anger go.

"We begin again," he says. Even now, under the stink of mud and lyrium, she smells like honey. "We put down roots."

Her hand rubs small, gentle circles against his back. A knot beneath his ribs, present so long he'd forgotten it existed, begins to come undone. "We stay," she says, in answer.

"Yes." Fenris presses his mouth to the top of her head, and breathes her in. When he exhales, he lets go of the clenched, banked anger he has carried these past three years. Let the wind carry it, he thinks, far across the sea; he has no more room for it here.

Perhaps Hawke does the same. If she does, she makes no sign. Soon enough, she falls asleep, and he follows, into true rest.

***

Hawke wakes with a crick in her neck and a dent from one of the many, many rivets on Fenris' chest plate in her cheek. She also wakes with her head pillowed on his uninjured thigh, and his hand moving slowly through her hair.

 _So I'm not awake then_. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries very hard to ignore the birdsong and the sunlight pouring down upon her. _Instead, I am having one of the best dreams of my life, and I am simply going to refuse to wake up. For the rest of my life._

"You are awake, Hawke." A warm thumb sweeps along her cheekbone, as sweet as a kiss. "And it's morning."

"What if I told you I didn't care? About the morning bit." He smells _marvelous_ , under the stale sweat and acrid poultices and smoke. Like leather, and clean oil, and then just like _Fenris_. Like summer, or at least sunlight.

A soft laugh stirs her hair. The thumb comes to rest at the corner of her mouth. "It would still be so. The morning is pleasant enough. Waking was no hardship for me."

Hawke rolls her eyes beneath her lids. "Of course it wasn't. You're one of those abominable _morning people_."

That gets her one more laugh, and so she finally rolls on her back and opens her eyes.

And there he is, close enough to make her heart stutter. "How's that wound doing?" Her voice threatens to crack, and her throat is dry, dry, dry.

"Well enough."

She's afraid to touch him, in case she really _is_ still dreaming, and she wakes to discover they're still worlds away from each other, without any hope of ever closing the distance.

He must read something of her fear in her face; his hand stills on her cheek, warm and achingly familiar. "You're here," he whispers, as if he doesn't quite believe it himself. "We are together."

"Are we?" She can't help asking, not just to hear him say it, but to know, without doubt, he's chosen her, and chosen freely. Whatever his answer, she'll abide; it'll be enough — more than enough — that they at last have peace between them again.

Fenris' eyes cloud briefly, but before she can curse herself too roundly, he smiles. Wistful, and brimming with hope. And oh, _Maker_ , how hope suits him, as if it were made for no face but his to show.

"We — will be," he says at last. "Yes."

Of course; no worthy bridge is ever built in a single day. There is such work yet to be done, such distance yet to cross — but to be crossed _together_ , at last.

 _Now_ she can touch him; just one hand pressed to his cheek, though she has to arch her back to reach him. He shivers as soon as her skin meets his, eyes closing in unalloyed pleasure.

"Hawke," he whispers. "Stay."

She smiles. The wind is in the east now, but that hardly matters. "As long as you want me to, love."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come talk to me on [Tumblr! <3 ](http://theherocomplex.tumblr.com)


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